How can you describe an expression? The words happiness, sadness, or fear can all be tied to bodily functions such as goosebumps, flushed lips, tears, and hormone production. When we express our emotions through art, are they accurate? Our words may be the best we can manage, but silence is equally important. Words are only able to describe a limited amount of reality, which means we can’t explore the world beyond our conscious limits. Samuel Taylor Coleridge haunts his reader in Christabel with supernatural powers and witches. Gothic poetry is characterized by the darkness between the lines. The author uses rhetorical and manipulative questions, plots and manipulations to make his reader feel emotions without actually experiencing them.
Christabel is a story that includes the reader emotionally. The reader feels sympathy for Christabel as the story unfolds and she becomes more confused and weaker. Christabel is a young girl who has walked out of bed into the darkness at night. She’s innocent and impressionable. In “silence, she prays” “she kneels below the huge tree,” and “she prays” in “silence.” Coleridge is warning his readers of Christabel’s powerlessness. Coleridge’s use of silence in the woodlands helps his reader focus on the girl, not the woods.
The poet continues on, highlighting Christabel’s innocence even further. The first sounds that he mentions are “bleak moaning” in the forests. The word “bleak,” which is used to describe the impending danger for Christabel, should alert her. However, she fails to see this. Coleridge is using contrast imagery to depict Christabel’s ignorance. The word “bleak”, which means cold and charmless, is used here. He emphasizes Christabel’s “ringlet curl” as well as “the lovely lady cheek,” a sign of her innocence and childlike aesthetic. Christabel appears to be a child of innocence in the most harsh and lonely of environments, but she is unafraid. Coleridge uses the contrast between these two poems to create unease in his reader. Many Gothic poetry works aim to make the reader feel uneasy by keeping him or her uncertain about the story and the outcome.
Coleridge uses his story to make the readers feel more and more like Christabel. Christabel’s first half is full of activity. She makes decisions on her own, speaks up, and even when Geraldine manipulates, she is logical in her decisions. The reader may find it frustrating, but Christabel’s innocence plays a major role in her character. The reader can then see the world from a different perspective. Coleridge takes his reader on a journey that we cannot fully understand. Geraldine might curse you at the end. You may feel helpless to change your actions. Bewildered is an odd feeling of being out-of-control, confused. Coleridge manages to create a similar atmosphere for the reader, but without the blatant confusion of poets like e.e.cummings.
He uses his inability to say things to upset the reader’s power, and the balance of characters with ourselves. He makes us unable to understand the message. Coleridge reveals half-secrets to us many times in Christabel. Coleridge says that Christabel cannot tell what the sounds in the woods are, when she first hears them. The word “it” suggests something unhuman, and a possible threat for Christabel. But then he introduces Geraldine, who seems to be human. Geraldine appears in Christabel’s room, undressed, under the moonlight. Coleridge does not intend to imply a sexually homoerotic meaning, but rather that Geraldine had a “sight to dream of” on her bosom. The cruelest half secret of all is revealed at the end of the poem. Coleridge makes the cruelest of teases at the end. Christabel can’t explain her experience, so the reader is helped by the simple fact that it happened. In the same way that Christabel is upset, we find ourselves “O’er-mastered” by this spell and are unable to express or understand our feelings. The narrator conveys the information about the spell by Christabel’s silent silence. Coleridge once again uses the lack of words in order to express the fear of what is unknown. The power of silence is to turn arrogant humans into specks. Coleridge leaves us feeling dumbstruck and “in a trance of dizziness.”
Coleridge is more interested in asking questions than answering them. Coleridge’s question “For what can ail this mastiff bitch?” is left hanging, unanswered. In Christabel’s room, the girls begin to talk about Christabel’s deceased mother, who is present. Geraldine, using her “power,” tells the ghost to “flee” and it is obvious that Geraldine can speak to the dead. Coleridge then asks three questions. What is wrong with Geraldine? Why does she stare with a shaky eye? Can she, the bodiless deceased, spy? “Coleridge uses this boundary to protect the reader from a new secret. He gives a hint, then quickly takes it back by refusing the answer to his questions. The parallel between the line about the “mastiff” bitch and this repetition of the word “ails”, implies that Geraldine shares some similarities with the dog. Geraldine’s cries and hollow voice are her way to howl at the moon.
Coleridge’s Gothic poetry is known for its sinister, uncanny atmosphere. These rhetorical statements could be read as the author’s confusion. Coleridge knows the answers to all his questions, but does he know them? Has Geraldine perplexed him just like Christabel, his dog, and the reader? Does he grasp the darkness that he’s written about? He may not have full access to the spiritual realm he speaks of, but perhaps he does. Coleridge is probably being cautious because he fears that too much contact with this spiritual realm will bring him the curse Christabel received from Geraldine. Christabel invites Geraldine to her castle, and even carries her inside. This shows her willingness to be naive. Christabel allows Geraldine to manipulate her, and take over. Coleridge and his reader are given a safe haven by Coleridge, who leaves questions unanswered to protect them from “the darkness”. The truth is left in the shadows, and it feels more and more haunting. Fear is easy to describe: our hearts beat faster, our hair stands out, we sweat, and our goosebumps appear. It is harder to describe the mental terror: that feeling you have that someone’s walking behind, that logic can’t explain. Coleridge uses silence to convey an intangible and undefinable feeling throughout Christabel.
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